And Who Are You?

Not many people understand me, because I’m not easy to understand. People are suppose to fit into the world’s little cookie cutter shapes, and if you don’t there’s very little understanding.

But it’s more than cookie cutters, it’s like Legos©, the ones I buy for my boys in the kits. They come with detailed instructions, and where all the pieces go is clearly marked in the book with pictures.

So you take the instruction manual and the blocks and build a perfect castle, or fire station, or forest hideout, or a three-dimensional model of a pirate ship complete with chests of booty and planks to walk.

Except, sometimes, at the end of the day I’m to tired to fight with the boys over putting things away properly, and instruction manuals get lost, and the kits get broken up. Inevitably there is a plastic box stuffed with random plastic pieces. B-10 and Carter Word love that box; it’s full of pirates and astronauts and the occasional princess and dragon.

They empty it out on the floor and without looking at a slicked-up instruction sheet, build a world. A world where the Princess meets the Astronaut, and together they tame the Dragon, who just happens to be a Pirate, himself. Then the rowdy band of mischief-makers head to the nearest mountain range and battle the monster, at least until my mum or I comes in and tells them to leave the cat alone and get off the sofa.

People want to see your box. They want to look at the color photos and know what you are suppose to look like and they want the instruction sheet to know how to deal with you. They want to know what set you belong with; are you a “Future City” kit or a “Sherwood Forest” kit? No one likes to see the pile of bricks, not yet put together, and Heaven forbid one of your blocks got sucked up in the vacuum!

I don’t have a box. I’ve got a Knight, a glow-in-the-dark Ghost, a SCUBA diver, and one of those Astronauts. And seven or eight blocks that I haven’t found a place for yet.

You know what? I feel sorry for those people who have such a tight grip on their instruction sheet they can’t move past being “Grown-Up”, a “Better-Than-You Christian”, or a “perfect mother”.

Life is so much more fun in the big box of extra pieces.

~Lone Butterfly )i(